The Dying Light (Bloodwitch #1)

Half-formed torments swam through Charlie’s clouded mind.

He could not see. He could not move. His throat was raw. Someone kept screaming.

‘Administering another dose.’ The sound of a bored, vaguely familiar voice.

‘Let’s see you try and fight me now.’ His scarred shoulder burning under a fierce grip.

The pinprick of a needle at his neck, his heart thumping far too fast, then empty space.

*

Ruby was staring up at him, blood dripping from her mouth. ‘Charlie?’ Her eyes were bleary, as though she had recently woken up from a dream. She patted the bony arm of the elderly woman beside her. ‘Granny, it’s Charlie. Charlie’s here.’

‘I’m here.’ Charlie gathered them both into a tight embrace, holding them to his chest, determined that nothing would ever make him let go of them again. ‘I came back for you.’

‘I knew you’d save us, Charlie,’ Ruby whispered, smiling.

Charlie looked around wildly, his insides burning. ‘Where are Leo and Dima?’

‘The soldiers came and took them away,’ June said. ‘They’re already gone.’

‘We’ll be fine.’ Charlie’s eyes travelled over the chains that were tangling around all of their limbs. He tried to force away the twisting feeling in the pit of his stomach. ‘I’ll get you out of here first, then I’ll find the boys.’

‘It’s too late for that, Charlie.’ Something red was blossoming at June’s temple.

‘Granny, don’t –’ Charlie stared into her eyes as they rolled back in her head, blood pouring down her cheeks from the gaping wounds. ‘Don’t say that. I – I’m going to save you, all right?’

‘You couldn’t save us, Charlie.’

’No.’ It escaped his throat as a guttural moan, something almost feral. He tried to pull at their hands, his teeth gritted. But they were so heavy that he could not move them even an inch. ’Come on! Why won’t you come with me?’

‘There’s nothing you can do.’ June’s mouth lolled open, her head slumped to one side.

Tears began to spill out of Charlie’s eyes, running down his cheeks in a steady flow. ‘I left you,’ he choked. ‘There was so much I … I only wanted …’ The raw panic inside him was starting to spiral out of control. ’Why can’t I do anything? Why can I never do anything?’

‘Will you play with me now, Charlie?’ Ruby whispered. ‘You won’t leave, will you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie sobbed. He covered his face with his hands as the skin disappeared from her face, leaving behind a small skull and two hollow, empty eye sockets. ‘It should have been me. I wish I could … I’m so sorry …’

‘Charlie …’ the wide, yawning mouth of the skull moaned. ‘Will you tell me a story?’

*

‘Can’t you do something to shut him up? All this screaming is killing my head.’

‘I’m not going near that mouth of his again – he almost bit my hand off last time.’

‘He will wear himself out eventually. Be patient. This is all part of the process.’

‘And how long can we expect this process to take, Doctor Ivanov?’

‘It’s highly individual, sire. There’s really no way to say for sure.’

‘Trust me, I know just what he needs.’

His jaw was prised open, a foreign object forced into his mouth. His screams were muffled. His eyes were wide underneath a black cloth. The world was dark and fathomless.

‘I remember when he used to make noises like that all the time. I missed that sound.’

Soft laughter. The brush of a proprietary touch along bare skin. ‘This look suits you. No one’s coming to save you. You know that, don’t you? You’re all on your own now.’

*

What felt like much later, though in truth he had no idea how much time had passed, Charlie returned to his senses. He found himself sitting on a familiar bed, his hands twisted in his lap. He did not know how he had gotten there. Perhaps someone had thought it was the best place to put him for now. Maybe they had decided it was a good idea to leave him to sit in silence on his own for a while. He remembered he had done something bad again. They had made him do it.

A length of rope ran from his wrists to the iron bedframe. His prison. Sitting on the edge of the bed, his feet did not yet touch the wooden floorboards. The last thing he remembered was his brother’s face, but why he was thinking of his brother, he did not know.

The door creaked open, and he caught sight of the lower half of an adult man’s body, followed by another, and another, until the room was full. He did not let himself look up. He had buried it all deep within him, long ago. Nothing would ever be enough to dredge it back up. His skin felt too tight. Somewhere beyond the padlocked window, someone was screaming.

‘Have you thought about what you did?’

‘You know what we want.’

‘You’d better not fight us this time.’

*

‘Another.’

‘Out of interest, Doctor, how do you know when you’ve pushed too far?’

‘He hasn’t broken yet, has he? He can take it.’

‘He looks kind of … not all there.’

‘Well, that is to be expected.’

A needle pierced through skin near his throat. The dim shapes before his eyes started to swim in front of him as his vision began to blur. He felt strangely light and empty. A numb sensation was creeping through his veins, starting at his heart. He felt it coursing its way down his bones, all the way through his body, to the ends of his fingers and into his toes.

‘Don’t fight it.’

The feeling threatened to consume him. He glanced across to the bedstead again and frowned. It was still there, the frame no longer made of iron, but of wood. He reached out to touch it. It felt wrong. His fingers moved, yet his wrists were blocked by something solid. There was the familiar touch of cold metal against his skin. But it was only a vague feeling, somehow just out of reach, like a day-old dream.

A little skeleton with red hair was running around beside him, like it wanted him to come and play.

*

He was in the dormitory of the orphanage where he had lived before the nightmares began. He looked up and down the rows of beds, each of them covered with the same rough brown blanket and single pillow, and slowly got to his feet. The tall, narrow windows at the end of the room let in the weak winter sunlight, which shone on the dust particles drifting through the air.

The room was exactly as he remembered it from a decade ago. The walls were bare, and the single shelving unit at the end of the room closest to the door was empty. There was not a single toy or game to be seen. As he crossed the room towards the door, he caught sight of the battered trunks lying underneath each bed that he passed. They contained all the meagre possessions that each boy who occupied a bed in that room owned. It was daytime, so the dormitory was empty.

Tentatively, he reached out to grasp the rusted doorknob on the splintered wooden door and pulled it open. He stepped out into the dark, narrow corridor, its walls cracked and chipped, finding his way by instinct towards the dayroom. He knew that this was where he was supposed to go. When they were not in lessons, the boys were put to work in the kitchen or required to do yard work or to scrub the floors. But Charlie somehow knew that this day was different for him, and that he was supposed to be in the dayroom.

This was by far the most welcoming room in the orphanage. It was the only room the boys were ever allowed into whose walls were painted. There was a box of toys in the corner that they were encouraged to play with. In the middle of the room, there was a small table, where they would find a box of crayons, and papers to colour on. The boys always looked forward to the times they were allowed into the dayroom. It meant that they would get a break from the cross words, rough hands, and hard work, at least for a while. For some of them, it even offered the opportunity to escape from the orphanage forever.

When he stepped through the stone archway into the dayroom, Charlie saw what he had expected to see, but it still caught him by such surprise that he faltered. He found himself torn between a desire to see and not to see, to remember and to forget. Two boys were sitting in comfortable silence by the small table in the middle of the room, their dark heads bent over their own tasks.

Charlie approached them. His six-year-old self was drawing a bird, while his older brother was colouring a picture of a house. As he examined his brother’s drawing more closely, Charlie identified four clumsily-drawn stick figures. There was an adult man and a woman, and two young boys, all with smiling faces. He watched his younger self push the crayons away before getting to his feet and hurrying straight past him on unsteady legs.

‘Where are you going, Charlie?’ His brother did not look up from his drawing.

‘I’m going to get my book,’ his childhood self replied, pointing towards the dormitory.

Charlie felt his breath catch in his chest as a painful memory pierced him. That was right, he had once loved to read. He had been learning how to do it in the orphanage, and he had been good at it. There was a teacher there who used to smile at him and tell him she was so proud that he was reading by himself already …

Charlie shook himself and made to follow his younger self back to the dormitory. He wanted to know what book he had been reading all those years ago. The desire to watch this childhood version of himself doing something that he no longer had any ability to do gnawed at him like hunger.

‘But we were told to stay here,’ his older brother reminded him. ‘The people will be here soon. It might be a mama and papa.’

‘I don’t want another mama or papa,’ his younger self said simply, and walked away.

Charlie felt hot tears prick the corner of his eyes as he mouthed the same words at the same time. He remembered saying those words. He remembered how he had thought nothing of going back to the dormitory that day. He had never even had a chance to say goodbye.

‘No,’ he strained to say, his voice echoing faintly inside his own head. ‘Don’t go.’

He reached out a hand helplessly, as though he could do something to stop his younger self from taking those fateful steps back to the dormitory, back to his books. He stayed rooted to the spot as he heard movement behind him. When he looked over his shoulder, the scene was becoming oddly hazy, the light from the windows into the playroom over-bright.

Two adults had appeared in the room – a middle-aged couple, well-dressed and smiling, though Charlie could not make out their faces clearly. He had never seen them, but he had imagined them often enough. The man would have kind eyes and would want to teach him things. The woman would have warm arms and would feel like home.

The scene began to dissolve in front of his eyes, vanishing like smoke in the air. He was left with nothing but a hollow space in the pit of his stomach. Then the terrible sound of his childhood self discovering that his brother – his only family – was gone forever screamed through his head. Charlie covered his face with his hands, his whole body racked with sobs. There was so much pain in that sound that he thought he would die from it. It was too much for him to bear any longer. He knew where that little boy had run away to next, and what had happened to him once he got there. He could not take any more.

His eyes shot open.

He was not alone.

*

‘Charlie? Are you lucid yet?’

Charlie blinked slowly, his gaze unsteady and unfocused. With some effort, he raised his eyes. A slight, pale young man was standing in front of him, his bright eyes gleaming. He wore round glasses, and his hands were hidden in the pockets of a long, white lab coat. Sharp-featured, with high cheekbones and a jutting chin, his curly hair was the same shade of brown as Charlie’s. They shared the same slightly crooked nose.

‘Max,’ Charlie wanted to say, but though his mouth moved, no sound came out.

‘Can you hear me?’ his brother asked, tilting his head to one side. Drawing closer, he removed a needle from one of his pockets. ‘You’ve worn yourself out, haven’t you? I’m going to draw some more blood now. Don’t struggle!’ he added, as Charlie seized up at the sight of it and tried to jerk away. ‘Just relax. This is something different. It won’t be like before …’

Exhaustion creeping through his body, Charlie allowed himself to go limp, his eyes drifting to the needle stuck in the crook of his arm. His sweatshirt was gone. He felt strangely light, and his head was spinning. He shifted his hands, feeling metal against his bare skin. Both of his wrists had been secured to the arms of a chair with a pair of handcuffs. He glanced up, and saw his own fear and confusion mirrored in his older brother’s eyes.

‘They needed to restrain you to keep you from hurting yourself.’ The needle was withdrawn.

His voice raw, Charlie managed to rasp out a single word. ‘Why?’

‘I need to check something again,’ Max said, as though talking to himself, ‘before …’

Charlie swallowed, his throat dry and ragged. ‘Why is this happening to me?’

‘It’s not going to kill you.’ Max shrugged. ‘You’ve survived worse.’

‘How do you know that?’ The question escaped him in a whisper.

‘Well, you weren’t exactly being quiet about it.’ A thin smile shifted his brother’s delicate features. ‘Even that animal of a lieutenant eventually got tired of your screaming, which, believe me, is something I never thought I would witness.’

‘What is this place?’ Charlie asked, shifting towards the edge of his chair.

Max regarded him steadily, stroking his sharp chin as he did so. He seemed deep in thought. ‘Whatever you’re imagining,’ he began, relishing the words, ‘it’s a whole lot worse.’

‘We could get out of here,’ Charlie said desperately. ‘We could escape – together.’

A soft furrow appeared in Max’s brow. ‘Why would I want that?’ he asked, sounding genuinely confused. ‘I’m exactly where I want to be.’

‘Do you even know what they’re doing to the people they’ve got imprisoned here?’

‘I’m learning more here than I ever have before. I want to be part of this discovery.’

‘You do realise there are children trapped here? Someone’s got to do something!’

‘Do I need to give you another dose,’ Max warned, sharp-edged, ‘little brother?’

Charlie felt a hairline fracture crack somewhere in his mind, as a terrible realisation threatened to break upon him. With some effort, he pushed it away. He would not – he could not – believe it.

‘But the things they’re doing – the experiments,’ he said. ‘It’s – it’s not right.’

Max’s eyes narrowed, lending his youthful face a hard, dangerous look. ‘Whatever is going on in that thuggish mind of yours, I suggest you put a stop to it, for your own sake.’ He backed away, his hands returning to the pockets of his lab coat. ‘Nothing you do will make any difference. You may have been an urchin prince out on the streets, but you are powerless here.’

‘I always believed that I would find you,’ Charlie found himself saying. He saw Max, who had turned on his heel to leave, pause at his words. ‘There was a window in my bedroom. They always kept it locked. I couldn’t reach it, but I could see the sky from the bed. I used to count the stars every single night – it was the only thing that kept me from losing my mind. On each one, I made a wish. Always the same one. I wished I would get back to you, someday.’

Max did not turn around. ‘If you had just listened to me, none of it would have happened.’

Charlie watched his brother leave the cell, his words ringing in his ears. He let his head hang low, his neck stiff and aching, and closed his eyes. He breathed through the feelings that rose up, swirled around, reached their peak, and gradually began to fade. What remained, he forced deep down inside of himself.

There had been no sound of a key turning in a lock. Perhaps Max had forgotten about it, or perhaps they had thought that – with Charlie drugged and restrained – there would be no need for one. He opened his eyes, his heart beating fast in his chest. He knew what he had to do.

Craning his neck down towards his shoulder and upper arm, he drew a mouthful of the material of his t-shirt between his teeth, gathering as much of it into his mouth as he could. He pressed his knee against the arm of the chair, pushing up the handcuff and keeping it taught.

He brought his thumb back under his palm, twisting it as far as it would go. Then he wrenched his hand through the gap, his agony muffled as skin shredded beneath metal until, at last, his hand was free. He allowed himself to heave in one ragged breath. He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat at the sight of what he had done to himself.

Then he did it again with his other hand.

His shoulders trembling, a sheen of sweat covering his forehead, Charlie staggered towards the door to the cell. His knuckles were ruined, and both his thumbs were twitching horribly. The taste of adrenaline still at the back of his throat, Charlie knew he still had some time before he would feel the full extent of the pain. He collapsed against the frame, edging the door open the slightest fraction, enough to see that the passageway was dark and empty.

‘Powerless, am I?’ he muttered, kicking the door open, his breathing heavy as his chest rose and fell rapidly. ‘Think I can’t make a difference, huh? Just wait – I’ll show you …’

He was on his own. His family were gone. No one was coming to save him.

But he was alive – and he was not the only person imprisoned in the Volya Facility.

Charlie knew then what he had to do next. No matter what it took, no matter what the cost, he was going to make sure the other prisoners were set free. He was going to get them out.

Every last one of them.

The passageway was lined on both sides with countless locked doors. Charlie took a step forward, unsure where to begin. Then he halted in his tracks, drawn by movement a few doors down from his cell. He caught a snatch of unpleasant laughter and narrowed his eyes. As the door opened outwards, Charlie heard the sound of two male voices, neither of which he recognised. This was likely to be his only chance.

Without hesitation, Charlie flattened his back against the wall and stalked closer towards the guards. He made sure to stay in their blind spot, hidden behind the open door of the cell. He knew, after what had been necessary to escape the cuffs, that his hands would be useless in a fight. He braced himself for a quick, brutal scuffle, calling on all the experience he had ever learnt in his time spent fighting on the streets.

When the guards made to close the door behind them, he launched himself forward, catching them both unawares. He was faster than they were, and they had no warning. He brought one of the guards crashing to the ground with a roundhouse kick to the head. Spinning through, carried by his own momentum, Charlie smashed his knee into the second guard, bringing him down as well. He took the set of keys that one of the men had let fall from his hand, as well as a handgun, which he stuck in the back of his jeans.

‘What d’you think is happening out there?’ he heard a girl ask, as he entered the cell.

Charlie’s eyes fell on a group of about thirty children, all of them female. Most of them looked around the age of ten, and he guessed that none of them were as old as he was. Their hands were not restrained, and some of the older girls had their arms around the younger ones, who looked terrified. Charlie realised, rage pounding in his head, that all of them had their ankles shackled. They were chained together on a much longer chain that was fixed into an iron hook set into the floor. While most of the girls wore collars, a few of their throats were bare.

‘Please,’ one of the older girls said hesitantly, ‘don’t take us back to the machines …’

‘Don’t worry, I’m a friend,’ Charlie said, his fury rising at the images that sprang to the forefront of his mind at her words.

He knelt beside them and, one by one, unlocked the shackles keeping them prisoner. The pain in his hands steadied him.

‘Come on, I’m getting you all out of here, right now,’ he said, picking up two of the smallest girls and leading the way out of the cell. ‘Follow me. Quickly.’

It was with some relief that Charlie found the girls were willing to follow his orders. He stood at the door as they all hurried out into the passageway, looking around them with anxious expressions. The younger girls clustered around the older ones, but they seemed to know without being told that they must be quiet.

Once he had checked that the cell was empty, Charlie headed to the front of the group, leading the way. Then, as he looked back, his eyes scanning the girls’ faces, a thought hit him.

‘Wait,’ he said, and the others stopped at once. ‘Has anyone seen a little girl with red hair? Saga?’

‘You mean the little Casimir coven girl?’ one of the older girls asked, pushing her glasses up her nose as she pointed along the passageway. ‘She’s in one of those cells back there. It’s the one with the red door.’

Charlie eased the two girls he was carrying out of his arms and set them on their feet. ‘You older kids look after the younger ones, all right?’ he said. ‘Don’t let them fall behind.’

‘You’re not coming with us?’ the girl with glasses called after him as he tore away.

Charlie threw the set of keys to her. ’Take these and get out of here. You come across any guards, don’t hold back. Kill them all. Don’t stop running ’til you find somewhere safe.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’m not leaving this place without her.’ He glanced over his shoulder to see them all still standing beside the cell. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he demanded. ’Don’t look back – go!’

‘Hey!’ the girl shouted, as the others started running. ‘What’s your name?’

‘My name’s Charlie,’ he said. ‘Now go, and don’t let them catch you. Don’t you ever let me see your faces around here again, you hear me?’

He planted his feet in front of the cell with the red door, and, aiming the gun squarely at the keyhole, shot the lock off. Inside the room, there stood a single wire cage. And inside the cage, there was a little girl with a tear-stained face. Her hair was the colour of fire.